The present invention relates generally to the field of data processing systems, and more particularly to reproducing a computing entity and an associated input/output configuration on other computing systems.
Within a networked computing environment, such as a data center, some portions of the environment include computing systems that include various virtualization technologies. The networked computing environment may include: one or more computing systems that include a plurality of interconnected physical resources (e.g., microprocessors, memory, storage devices, communication devices, etc.); a local group/cluster of computing systems, such as racks of blade servers, network-attached storage (NAS) systems, and storage area networks (SANs); distributed computing environments, such as a cloud infrastructure; or any combination thereof. Within a virtualized system, each computing entity behaves as if the computing entity were a separate system, such as a computing node, a storage system, and/or a networking system.
Virtualization is one aspect to solution elasticity, reliability, and security requirements of the workloads of customers in a data processing center or cloud computing environment. Provisioning (e.g., cloning) and deprovisioning of instances of physical and/or virtual computing entities addresses the elasticity requirements of customers that have workloads that are dynamic. Examples of computing entities include, but are not limited to: logical partitions (LPARs), virtual machines (VMs), storage area network (SAN) systems, network-attached storage (NAS) systems, network switches, computing nodes, etc. Computer processors and memory include known characteristics that can be virtualized and allocated (e.g., provisioned) among computing entities. In addition, various storage devices can also be virtualized, and input/output (I/O) resources (e.g., I/O devices) are more varied and can include more specific features that can create configurations unique to a computing entity. Examples of I/O resources include: communication adapters, such as network adapters and communication adapters; co-processors, such as encryption accelerators, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and graphics processing units (GPUs), and compression accelerators; etc.